Last season's top novice hurdler Bob Olinger was today cut to even-money for a repeat Cheltenham festival win, having comfortably landed Punchestown's Grade 3 Kildare Novice Chase for trainer Henry De Bromhead and jockey Rachael Blackmore.
By Sholokhov, the sire of Don Cossack and Shiskin, Bob Olinger won twice at Grade 1 level as a novice hurdler last season and having won on chase debut at Gowran in November, today stepped up further.
Three of the 13 fences were omitted due to the angle of the low sun but in jumping the other ten, Bob Olinger's technique was good and once asked to quicken rounding the home turn, moved to the front and clear of Capodanno before the final fence.
The seven year stayed on strongly to readily beat Capodanno by four and three parts of a length, with a further 27 to third-placed Gaillard Du Mesnil, runner-up to Bob Olinger at Cheltenham.
Following the race De Bromhead stated “he was really good and Rachael was really happy with him. He jumped great and it was a class race.
“He’d come on a hell of a lot since Gowran and I think the experience he got there has really stood to him. The second (Capodann) is obviously a good horse and the pair of them have pulled clear. Thankfully our man kept going.
“The Dublin Racing Festival is the plan subject to ground - there would want to be a good ease in the ground. It seems our best option. It’s three weeks and I think that’s the plan at the moment.
“He’s got a lot of class and a great attitude.”
Paddy Power later cut Bob Olinger to even money, from 6/4, for the 2m4f Turners Novices Chase at the Cheltenham festival.
That Cheltenham race is registered as the 'Golden Miller Novices Chase' and was, for sponsorship reasons, called the JLT Novices Chase from 2014 until 2019 and due to the merger of JLT and Marsh, was titled the Marsh Novices Chase for the past two years.